Why does SketchUp lose days of work

TK0001

..whenever Windows 7 automatically restarts overnight to make updates? This has happened to me before, and I don't understand.

I made huge progress on my model yesterday, saved all throughout the day. Finished up, saved, then put my computer into sleep mode. This morning I turned on my computer and saw it had automatically restarted overnight. Opened up my model and saw a version from 3 days ago. I backed out, and opened up the backup version. Same thing. Then I opened up the Autosave version. Same thing. Now I have to waste a day just putting things back to where they were last night when I finished. I am IRATE.

I see absolutely no practical purpose for this, and I haven't seen anyone say that I need to save and COMPLETELY shut down SketchUp before finishing for the night. I guess I will from now on (plus save the model to a thumb drive, just to be sure).

Is this just one of those quirky things that sometimes happens, or is there some idiotic setting somewhere that I am unaware of?

Gaieus

Ihave never heard of such a thing to be honest. True that I do not even allow any Windows system to automatically update (and restart) but I am pretty sure this should not revert an skp file to a days old version.

irwanwr

that's something i've never heard before too.
unless you're using something like DeepFreeze, etc.
windows system restore wont run automatically either.
unless your update failed and triggered the system restore to run.

mwm5053

Buy a Mac

Aerilius

@mwm5053 said:

Buy a Mac
Instead of scrapping everything, it might be better to try to solve the problem.

I'm wondering whether the file really does not exist on the drive (or if it could be "found" with a data recovery tool, maybe it's just dropped from the file table).
I see several possibilities how a file could disappear:

Journaling file systems (like NTFS) keep files in memory for a short time before they write the files on the disk. So when the computer crashes before the file is completely written, it can be lost. But normally all write actions are finished when the computer properly reboots.
If the system is hibernated and the file is accessed from another system (normally impossible because the disk is then locked), the file system can become inconsistent and the file table does not match with the state that of the hibernated system.
Is it possible that the file was at a temporary location? Any problems that could be caused with access rights / "Virtual Store" etc.?
I don't know how SketchUp behaves when it is forced to close when Windows reboots. It's maybe really safer to close it (by the way, some graphic cards show visual glitches in SketchUp after stand-by/hibernate, so a restart isn't bad).

thomthom

Doesn't sound like a SketchUp problem. More like some backup software gone mental. Or some severe system or hardisk problem.

TK0001

Yeah, I figured it must be something on my end, but it's maddening when it happens. I'm still getting my model back to where it was two days ago.

I've resolved to shut down SketchUp after I'm finished for the day. Guess I should reboot my computer every once in awhile, too.

gilles

When it's important work I always make an external backup, USB....

irwanwr

@aerilius said:

[*] Is it possible that the file was at a temporary location? Any problems that could be caused with access rights / "Virtual Store" etc.?

that's what came into my mind also. a VM might give that kind of syndrome. i prefer to have anti malware or antivirus rather than using VM. in a rush, one might forgot that he's been working on a VM environment.
perhaps it's also a good idea not to leave any application on when you're not using it. also not to force windows shut down when there are several application are still active. they might still have some data either on the RAM or the virtual memory in page file.

wish you luck.

david.

It's not a SU problem. And, I've never heard of Windows coming out of sleep without user intervention (unless you've got wake-on-lan, etc turned on). Something you're doing or not doing is causing this issue. I'm not sure why you seem to have been resistant to closing SU at the end of the day. That would have explicitly forced you to save or discard your work.